Man in the News; New SUNY Chancellor: Thomas Alva Bartlett

By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Published: October 5, 1994

As Thomas A. Bartlett recalls it, "it was a complete bolt out of the blue."

There he was, one afternoon early in June, sitting contentedly in the Portland office of the University of Oregon. At 63, retiring after five years as Chancellor of the Oregon state university system, he was looking forward to assuming the mantle of chancellor emeritus, and leading a different sort of life. There was his cattle farm in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, and some projects connected with international education. Maybe even a book.

Then, the telephone rang.

Now, as a result of that bolt-out-of-the-blue call from an executive search company, Dr. Bartlett plans to sell his 130 head of cattle and take office on Dec. 1 as the fifth Chancellor of the State University of New York in the 30 years since Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller created the post and led an expansion of the system.

As a successor to D. Bruce Johnstone, who stepped down in March because of cancer, Dr. Bartlett is to receive $172,500 a year to head the largest state university system in the United States. SUNY has 400,000 students, 64 campuses and a budget of just over $5 billion a year.

"It's a little bit like getting married," he said of his decision to accept the SUNY post after much reflection and evaluation and many discussions. "It isn't just a job. It's not a contract. It's a relationship."

But it is clear that he sees the relationship as one that extends far beyond ivy-covered walls.

"I think of the chancellor's role as strategy, structure, leadership," he said.

With a background in foreign affairs that includes nearly eight years with the United States Mission to the United Nations, he sees the impact of world economy and the state's politics on education. "Is the public going to decide it wants to invest less in higher education?" he said.

He knows that people educated in the university will ultimately play a role in the research and public policy that shape decisions on issues like health care and the environment.

"Public higher education exists to serve individual needs and social needs, and much of the trick of leadership is to keep those two in the right balance," Dr. Bartlett said. "Our fundamental challenge is to combine access and quality, or quantity and quality, if you like."

Dr. Bartlett, who has also been Chancellor of the University of Alabama and the president of Colgate University, assessed his role in New York this way:

"I think it is the job of the chancellor to help the board of trustees -- and through the board of trustees, the political processes of the state -- to understand the choices, make sure those choices are clear, get the best possible professional advice on how to get the most results from our money, to make the best educational choices and to make sure that we've got able people at the right places in the organization."

David B. Frohnmayer, the president of the University of Oregon, who worked with Dr. Bartlett for nearly a dozen years in various capacities, called him "a very intelligent, very intense and extremely experienced higher education administrator" whose background in diplomacy will serve him well.

Yetta G. Samford Jr., an Opelika, Ala., lawyer who was a trustee when Dr. Bartlett headed the Alabama system, described him as "a person of superior intellect. He demands academic excellence."

Discussing Dr. Bartlett's managerial style, he said, "He lets his people have free rein as long as they keep within the mission that they've agreed on."

Even as a teen-ager, Thomas Alva Bartlett thought of a career in education. The youngest of the three sons of Cleave Bartlett, a auditor-bookkeeper and real estate broker, and the former Alma Hanson, a housewife, Dr. Bartlett was born in Salem, Ore., on Aug. 20, 1930.

At Salem High, he was student body president, a member of the football team, a champion debater and, he says with apparent modesty, "a pretty good student." He considered a future in politics or education.

"It seemed to me that it was a great big world out there that I didn't know nearly enough about, and I wanted to see it and experience it and find out as much as I could about it," he said. "In my opinion, that -- at that point in my life -- said education."

After graduation from Salem High in 1947, he spent two years on a Rotary scholarship at Willamette University and two years at Stanford University on a Newhouse Foundation scholarship before receiving a bachelor of arts degree, Phi Beta Kappa, in political science with an emphasis on international relations.

Next stop was Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying philosophy, politics and economics. He was granted a master's degree in 1953.

While working toward a doctorate in political science that he received from Stanford in 1959, he was recruited as an adviser to the United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations and remained there until 1963, when his work on Arab-Israel relations led to a proposal to become the president of the American University in Cairo.

He then was the president of Colgate and of the Association of American Universities, before assuming chancellorships in Alabama and Oregon.

Since 1954, he has been married to the former Mary Bixby, known as Molly, whom he met at Stanford.

Photo: Once just months from retirement to an Oregon farm, Dr. Thomas A. Bartlett is instead contemplating preparations for a new job, as the next Chancellor of the State University of New York. He begins on Dec. 1. (Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times) Chart: "OVER TIME: Bartlett's Predecessors" shows SUNY Chancellors since 1964.